As you may remember, Dailymotion launched its content syndication platform in early 2012. Since then, more than 1,500 publishers have joined DPN, including Orange, MSN and Yahoo (see our previous story).

In practical terms, DPN lets publishers use Dailymotion’s 30-million video library and easily monetize them by receiving a share of Dailymotion’s ad revenues. This concept naturally appealed to blinkx, its CEO S. Brian Mukherjee explains: “The Dailymotion Publisher Network gives us a huge library of content to tap in to, with built-in monetization opportunities and functionality.”

According to Dailymotion’s SVP for International Development, Luc Dumont, it brings benefits for both parties:

“Our Publisher Network offers a tangible incentive for Publishers like blinkx to give incremental visibility to the Dailymotion player across their digital network: it means more content, more time spent and now more monetization for them.”

Dailymotion’s growth in numbers

When we first reported on DPN last July, it only boasted 500 publishing partners, a number that has now tripled over the last few months. In addition, its employee count in the US has doubled this year – it currently has over 120 employees in France and 40 on the other side of the pond.

Overall, Dailymotion currently boasts 116 million unique monthly visitors worldwide, which makes it the Internet’s 31st largest site according to Comscore. Dailymotion summarized some of this data in an infographic which you can see in full here.

While Dailymotion is the second largest video portal after YouTube, it hopes to differentiate from Google’s offering by focusing on quality, and points out that it now has over 10,000 premium content partners, including HBO, Showtime, Netflix, Hulu, FOX Sports and NBC. Since YouTube has also developed premium channels, its competitor also insists on its own original content program, Motionmakers, which has around 50,000 members.

From online to offline: Dailymotion Studios

To keep on boosting unique programming, Dailymotion has announced original plans for 2013: the opening of Dailymotion Studios in Paris and New York. ‘Studios’ isn’t a metaphor, and what the company is planning to open are real-life facilities “available to any amateur or professional videographer to access equipment, production space and editing technology to create and premiere original content on the site.”

According to Giuseppe Demartino, SVP Corporate Communications for Dailymotion HQ, this project represents a new step for the company:

“Our partners – advertisers and content owners – will now have access to the best of technology and video tools to create and give shape to their very own projects. Our goal is to help them individually and provide them with advice from video platform professionals; a new way to differentiate ourselves from our competitors.”

While there is still a long way to go for Dailymotion to become its market’s leader, it is interesting to see how it decided to challenge YouTube by focusing on quality, while bringing benefits to its partners.